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Lifecasting is a big thing at the moment. One step beyond blogging and tweeting is the ability to record and broadcast live video from a cellphone to share what you’re doing – and engage with your audience.

Qik is probably the best known of these, and is slowly rolling out an early beta service for Windows Mobile users. But Qik are not the only game in town – there are a couple of existing solutions that have great support for Windows Mobile users.

LiveCast provide a live video streaming platform for Windows Mobile and laptop or UMPC users. The video is synchronized with GPS position data so your viewers can see where you are when you’re broadcasting (or when they review archived footage where you were).

While the video quality on LiveCast (formerly known as PocketCaster from ComVu) is pretty good for high end phones the client is not the most intuitive (so expect to spend some time figuring it it), and the web site is a bit clunky.

LiveMedia from IncaX provides very similar capabilities – private or public broadcasting from either PC or Mobile device, though as well as streaming video it allows you to insert other media from your device to enhance the presentation.

The LiveMedia GPS mobile client (currently in beta) adds GPS location data to the broadcast from your phone, and also allows you to record a broadcast to local storage for later upload. This feature is particularly useful as it allows you to keep a record of a trip without having to worry about connectivity.

Although feature-for-feature these two solutions are fairly similar my preference is for LiveMedia. The video quality is slightly less fluid and there is no audio in the current beta version but the interface is significantly easier to work with and there are more options to share your broadcasts.

The great thing is that both of these products are at fairly early stages and are evolving quite quickly, as are the capabilities of the phones they run on. Missing features and complicated user interfaces will quickly give way to slick controls and, especially as bandwith increases, high quality video and audio.

Offbeatmammal (9 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

A geek who's been mobile most of his life - from the UK to Australia and now the Pacific Northwest. I'm an enthusiastic Windows Mobile user (and Vista on my UMPC) - always looking for a better solution to a problem that keeps evolving :)